Courts across China’s restive Xinjiang region have sentenced 45 people on terrorism charges amid a crackdown against minority Muslim Uighur separatists.<\/p>\n
ucanews.com reporter, Beijing
China
August 28, 2015<\/p>\n
Courts across China’s restive Xinjiang region have sentenced 45 people on terrorism charges amid a crackdown against minority Muslim Uighur separatists.<\/p>\n
Courts in Aksu, Kashgar, Karamay, Hotan and the autonomous Kazakh prefecture Ili held 10 trials in recent days, sentencing people to between four years and life in prison, state news agency Xinhua reported on Aug. 27.<\/p>\n
“The people’s courts have zero tolerance for terror crimes,” an unnamed official from Xinjiang’s highest court was quoted as saying by Xinhua.<\/p>\n
“They will continue to use the law to strike hard against the crime of illegally leaving the country, and use the law to strike hard against criminals who flee abroad and attempt jihad.”<\/p>\n
Under President Xi Jinping, the government has increasingly tried to seal Xinjiang’s long, remote border amid escalating attacks linked to Muslim separatists that peaked last year.<\/p>\n
In July, Thailand sent back more than 100 Turkic-speaking Uighurs deemed terrorists by China, despite protests from the United States and Turkey. Since then, state media have replayed images of the group hooded, handcuffed and separated by security agents on a flight back to China.<\/p>\n
As with the Thailand group, Chinese authorities have not publicly presented evidence of terrorism links in the recently announced Xinjiang cases. It also remained unclear whether defendants were permitted defence counsel.<\/p>\n
In a trial in Kashgar, five people were arrested on the border near Tajikistan and Afghanistan trying to join the Taliban and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, according to Xinhua.<\/p>\n
Verifying Beijing’s claims of organized activity by Xinjiang militants in this remote area remains difficult, said Mansur Khan Mahsud, research director at Fata Research Center, a security think tank in Islamabad.<\/p>\n
“Recent Pakistani military operations have led to the killing or capture of ETIM fighters, so their military capability is weak,” he told ucanews.com. “But if someone wants to come across, they can come, because you can’t seal the whole border.”<\/p>\n
Disputed claims<\/strong><\/p>\n Many of the defendants in the recent trials were described as religious extremists involved in travelling illegally out of China or organizing other people to leave.<\/p>\n China’s state media frequently portrays people leaving Xinjiang illegally as terrorists, a claim disputed by exiled Uighur groups.<\/p>\n “Under Xi Jinping’s heavy-handed repression of the Uighur people, many ordinary Uighurs simply want to flee the country,” said Alim Seytoff, director of the Uighur Human Rights Project in Washington D.C. “They don’t have passports, they don’t have money, they don’t have any other way to go to any other places legitimately.”<\/p>\n Uighurs have faced problems processing passports, and some have reportedly had travel documents confiscated, particularly in Xinjiang\u2019s border areas.<\/p>\n Authorities said they were introducing a new unified system for processing passports this month so “all residents would receive equal treatment”.<\/p>\n Uighurs deemed a security threat will continue to face a tough task leaving Xinjiang, said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n “Beijing’s top priority is the fight against separatism,” he said.<\/p>\n The central government continues to draft a vague terrorism law, and this week the top legislature proposed criminalizing “terrorist” clothing, the latest signs China is expanding its definition of terrorism, said Bequelin.<\/p>\n “If you get caught in this legal system and accused of sympathies or acts that can be construed as supporting a separatist idea or ideology, then you\u2019re probably not going to get a fair trial,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Courts across China’s restive Xinjiang region have sentenced 45 people on terrorism charges amid a crackdown against minority Muslim Uighur separatists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}